About Me

I'm just me - a solitary wanderer who trekked across much of the world and recently retired to a small farm in the Ozarks.
My checkered past includes time spent as an Army officer, high school teacher and principal, real estate broker, child protection worker and administrator, and social worker with the U.S. military.
Over the years I have resided in a variety of places including Missouri, Virginia, Okinawa, Kansas, Kentucky, and Arizona. I have also traveled to Germany, Mexico, Canada, Russia, Sweden, Great Britain, Belize, Guatemala, Taiwan, Guam, South Korea, Vietnam, and numerous islands in the Caribbean - including Cuba.
I have ridden in a Russian ambulance, hitch-hiked across Moscow late at night, fought an ostrich, celebrated New Year's at a street party in Hanoi, and bicycled across the Caribbean. My travels have taken me to Ground Zero in Hiroshima, the Bolshoi Ballet, China Beach, and the White House kitchen.
The nine things in life that I am most proud of are my children: Nick, Molly, and Tim, and my grandchildren: Boone, Sebastian, Judah, Olive, Willow, and Sullivan.
Life has been very good to me indeed!

Sunday, December 29, 2013

The Graffiti Pack

by Pa RockFilm Fan

I have been watching the George Lucas film classic, American Graffiti, this evening and thoroughly enjoying the experience. The 1973 movie follows a large group of young people cruising the streets of Los Angeles on a weekend night. The soundtrack is vintage 1950's and 1960's with many of the tunes strung together by Wolfman Jack's rambling radio commentary

The music is great, but it is the superlative cast of young stars that made this movie so memorable. The "kids" of American Graffiti (though most weren't as young as the characters they played) formed a unique group of young actors that fit squarely in cinematic history between the Rat Pack of the 1950's and 1960's, and the Brat Pack of the 1980's.

It's an ensemble cast with all of the actors playing characters of roughly equal importance. Richard Dreyfus, who could easily pass for a high school freshman in the film, was actually twenty-six when this movie was made. Ron Howard probably came the nearest of any cast member to being the age of the character he portrayed. Howard played a recent high school graduate getting ready to head off to college. He was nineteen at the time the movie was filmed.

Howard's girlfriend in American Graffiti was Cindy Williams who later became famous as Shirley of the television sitcom Laverne and Shirley. Ms. Williams, like Dreyfus, was a young adult twenty-six when she played Ron Howard's romantic interest. Suzanne Somers, the mysterious blond in the Thunderbird, was twenty-seven, and Harrison Ford, the juvenile delinquent drag-racer, was the old man of the group at thirty-one - though he looked to be about nineteen.

The baby of the cast was fourteen-year-old McKenzie Phillips. She spent most of the evening cruising with twenty-eight-year-old Paul Le Mot. Ms. Philips gave quite a credible performance as the pesky little sister who gets palmed off on Le Mot early in the movie.

The actors, the music, and the wonderful old cars are all essential elements of this American film classic. Even if Star Wars had never happened, George Lucas earned his spot on the Walk of Fame with American Graffiti.

This moviecaptures an era of innocence that those of us of a certain age remember fondly. It was created to be a great piece of Americana, and it has surpassed expectations!

1 comment:

Don
said...

"American Graffiti" is one of the top movies on my own personal hit list. Unlike most movies, it gets better the more often you watch -- especially if you're of an age to have lived through the times it portrays.To this day, I find myself rooting for the teenage lovers, the gawky McKenzie Phillips and even the effervescence of the sock hop.